Jenal is principal at MAJ Finance, a consulting and directorship for alternative investments, with specializations in the financial, operational and compliance areas.

In 2010, he retired as senior advisor and director of Cadogan Management, where he was previously chief financial officer, director of the Cadogan Opportunistic Alternatives Fund and director of the firm’s London office. He was responsible for the financial, administrative, regulatory, and compliance functions at the firm. Prior to joining Cadogan, he was the chief financial officer of T.C. Management in New York. Jenal has also served as controller and financial/operations principal at Sussex Asset Management, an offshore fund operator, and securities broker/dealer, and spent 10 years in various financial management positions at Young & Rubicam Advertising in New York.

He is a long-time supporter of Oswego, having made gifts nearly every year since graduating, including a naming gift for the Academic Commons in the Marano Campus Center. He serves on the President’s Campaign Cabinet and the School of Business Advisory Board.

Jenal graduated from SUNY Oswego with a degree in accounting and a minor in computer science, and earned an MBA in finance from Pace University. He resides in Edgewater, N.J.

—Margaret Spillett

]]>http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/11/jenal-joins-the-college-foundation-board/feed/0Scholarship Makes On-Campus Living Available to Local Studenthttp://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/11/scholarship-makes-on-campus-living-available-to-local-student/
http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/11/scholarship-makes-on-campus-living-available-to-local-student/#commentsMon, 11 Aug 2014 16:13:54 +0000http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/?p=6001Because residence life meant so much to her, an alumna has established the Alice Nykaza ’65 Endowed Scholarship that will provide a scholarship, preferably for an Oswego County student who lives on campus. Alice Ericksen Nykaza ’65 says a significant portion of her education took place among other students in the “dorms” and snack bar.

“I graduated from a small high school,” Nykaza says. “I appreciated finding friends on campus who were different from everyone else I had known. I met wonderful people who ended up becoming lifelong friends. I established this scholarship to show my roommates how much they mean to me.”

She recalls long talks and card games with the late Cynthia Moulton Dean ’65, who went by Cam; Concetta Fazzi Castelluzzo ’65; Barbara Clausen ’65, a sophomore roommate, and Naomi Lane Ericksen, who married Nykaza’s brother after freshman year. After graduation, Dean and Nykaza gathered with Cathy Carroway Needham ’65 and Nancy Egerbrecht ’65 for long and boisterous hands of pinochle.

The “pinochle reunions” stopped briefly when Dean died, but the women found a mutual college friend, Arlene Guzicki Novak ’65, to be Nykaza’s partner, and games continued. “We used to play cards a lot more. Now we do a lot of talking,” Nykaza says.

Nykaza taught school for four years before taking time off for her children. For 35 years, she and her husband owned and operated Eddy’s Big M grocery store in Mexico, N.Y. After her husband died 24 years ago, she ran the store herself. She now lives in Baldwinsville, where she enjoys doing genealogical research. She had been thinking for a long time about providing a scholarship at her alma mater.

“I decided the way to do it,” Nykaza says, “was to give a young person from the area the opportunity to live on campus so he or she could enjoy the same positive benefits I had when I was a student at Oswego.”

GEORGE DUMMITT ’69 is sitting on the hood of a cream-colored American Motors Gremlin on the set of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre in New York City. He is wearing a Local One union T-shirt, blue jeans, work boots. A quick-link hangs from his belt and holds his keys. A photographer snaps pictures of GEORGE.

GEORGE

[Looking out toward the audience]

Sitting where I am right now in the theatre, I can absolutely see the direct line back to Oswego.

[PHOTOGRAPHER repositions GEORGE on the car and snaps more pictures.]

There’s no question in my mind that what I do for a living—where I find all this satisfaction—
goes right back to Oswego and the time that I spent in theatre there.

[Special effects begin. Scene changes from the car at Belasco Theatre today, to a car in front of the 700 Building on SUNY Oswego Campus.]

GEORGE

[Looking out toward the audience]

So, I’m two years in the psychology program at Oswego, and on my 19th birthday,Michael Berkman ’69, who is a friend, gives me the keys to his Bonneville.

[GEORGE acknowledges MICHAEL, who addresses him.]

MICHAEL

Take it when you want it. Keep it in gas. Be careful. And let me know when you’re going
to take it.

[GEORGE nods toward MICHAEL. Then turns back to the audience.]

GEORGE

One night I wanted to borrow the car so I went to find Michael at the 700 Building—the old theatre building before Waterman existed.

[GEORGE walks into the 700 Building. His jaw drops as he scans a 16-foot high Gothic arch structure, with wrought iron fastenings on oak doors, marble steps and stained glass windows. Theatre Professor John Mincher stands to the side watching GEORGE’s reaction.]

Oh wait, that’s made out of plywood, and it’s been painted, and it’s got canvas on it, and that’s some sort of gelatin for the colored glass. Well, this could be fun…

[END OF SCENE]

For George Dummitt ’69, that moment in the 700 Building in 1967 has driven him to a successful career as a carpenter and stagehand in the New York City theatre world. Spanning more than 40 years, his career has enabled him to transform the three bare walls of a theatre into new scenes and time periods for a wide range of characters—a 1930s New York City boxing ring for Joe Bonaparte in Golden Boy, an Elizabethan law court for an original practice version of Twelfth Night – Richard III, an Afghan war scene for a German transgender rock-n-roller in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and a dozen other productions.

“I started to think about all the characters, all the events, all the situations that have happened within my space,” Dummitt says. “It all goes in and out the same loading door. It’s amazing what I do for a living.”

However, there has been one space that hasn’t changed much for Dummitt—a Paris opera house at the Majestic Theatre in New York City—at which the Phantom of the Opera has been running for 27 years. He began loading in the show in September 1987—four months before it opened—and he continues to work as a member of the carpenter department there when he isn’t working on assignment to another Shubert theatre.

“We all knew it would be a good job, but we didn’t know it would be like this,” Dummitt says of Phantom, which surpassed Cats as the longest-running Broadway show. “I certainly know Phantom as well as anybody. Now, I listen for my cues, and I listen when there’s a new person or an understudy. You can’t listen every night. You’d go crazy.”

In 1997, Dummitt became head carpenter for the Shubert Organization’s Lyceum Theatre, and later transferred into the Shubert’s Belasco Theatre as head carpenter, a role he currently holds. He oversees the members of the carpenter department at the Belasco during load-ins, production runs and load-outs of a show. Then when that theatre goes dark between shows, he returns to his position at Phantom.

During load-ins, Dummitt and his crew assemble set pieces envisioned by the set designer and built at union scenic shops. If needed, the carpenter crew can be called on to build additional scenic elements on site as required by the design. They collaborate with electricians, props staff, actors and directors and develop carpenter and stagehand cues for the production. He clocks long days during this part of a show: a week’s pay stub has been known to show 92 hours worked.

Once the show has opened, his schedule lightens, dropping to 32 to 36 hours a week, or about 4.5 hours for each of the seven to eight shows a week. He memorizes his cues, responds to the slight variations that occur in live performances and ensures that set movement, curtain drops and scene changes all go smoothly.

Eventually, his least favorite part of his job arrives.

“I hate the last performance because everything you do will be for the last time,” says Dummitt, who hopes to be retired before that day comes for Phantom. “The last time you move the set, the last time you open the door, the last time you drop the curtain. There’s such a finality.”

Then, it’s load-out. Dummitt and his crew strip the stage, again leaving three bare walls—an empty space for the next production to fill with new characters, sets and situations.

AT CURTAIN:

It’s 1969. GEORGE is wearing a graduation cap and gown and has just graduated from SUNY Oswego. He addresses the audience, answering the question about his future plans.

GEORGE

So I started going to “work parties” on Saturday mornings at the campus theatre. We’d build the scenery for an upcoming show on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings. And I found a whole group of people who I really liked, and who liked what I was doing. It was the opening of a whole new way to go. But I still got my degree in psychology because that seemed like a good thing to do. I first thought that after graduation maybe I’ll go into the theatre. But, no. It’s way too risky a business. It won’t take care of my wife and children.

[GEORGE takes off the cap and gown, and the scene changes into a dormitory hallway at the University of Buffalo.]

Now, I’m working as a head resident advisor in Tower dorm as I earn my master’s in student personnel and counseling for higher education. I figure someday I’ll run student housing or a counseling center on a college campus. One day I’m walking down the hallway when…

[The lights flicker. GEORGE stares at the lights and freezes.]

VOICE OF REASON

George, what are you doing here? You have no wife. You have no children.
What are you doing here?

GEORGE

I am on the Road to Damascus, as I like to think of it, and realize I was planning on people who didn’t exist. I am worried about providing for people who I didn’t have to care for yet. I finish my degree in counseling, because it never hurts to have a master’s in your pocket, and decide to give this theatre stuff a try.

[END OF SCENE]

The jump from a career in counseling to theatre wasn’t Dummitt’s first dramatic conversion. Raised Jewish, he became a Mennonite in seventh grade after attending some workshops and recreational programs sponsored by young Mennonite men who were doing alternative service in lieu of military service during the Vietnam War. The Mennonites taught Dummitt about ham radios and, more importantly, introduced him to the craft of carpentry.

His skills in woodworking and repairing things landed 16-year-old Dummitt a summer job as a carpenter at Manhattan General Hospital, where his mother worked as an administrative assistant. He decided he would study industrial arts at SUNY Oswego, which he says “was the industrial arts college at the time.” But the following summer—the summer before he came to Oswego, Dummitt transitioned from being a carpenter to a job in the drug addiction detox center at the hospital. The experience at the rehab center prompted him to write to Oswego and change his major from IA to psychology.

While he has never used his counseling and psychology degrees professionally, he says he probably draws on them every day.

Perhaps his counseling background helped him secure one of his most important roles in his life—that of a husband and father of four: Joanna, 35, working on a doctorate at UC Santa Cruz; David, 33, a speechwriter for Bloomberg Inc.; and 23-year-old identical twins, Jared, a research analyst at a New York City law firm who is applying to law schools, and Morgan, a professional sculptor.

He met his wife, Susan, during an opening night party for The Rink, starring Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera. Susan, a social worker, attended the event as a guest of a good friend who worked at a fashion house that had a relationship with Minnelli.

“There’s no reason in the world we should have met—except that we were supposed to,” Dummitt says. “I said the five hardest words a man can say to a woman, ‘Would you like to dance.’ She said yes and I brought her home that night in a taxi with 50 balloons from the party trailing behind us. Three years later, we married.”

Throughout their marriage, the Dummitts have supported each other’s careers and interests. George helped raise awareness and support for AIDS—a career focus for Susan for many years—by representing Phantom in the annual AIDS Walk NY, participating in Broadway’s Annual Easter Bonnet Competition and offering backstage “Tours with George” in exchange for a donation that benefits an AIDS charity.

Susan, in turn, developed a tradition of giving George an opening night gift tailored to the show.

“She expends a certain amount of creative energy in pursuit of the opening night gift,” George says, with a smile. Among his favorites are the ruby red slippers and flying monkey T-shirt he received and wore during opening night of Over the Rainbow, a retelling of the last months of Judy Garland’s life, and a small stuffed buffalo with a one-year certificate of adoption of a wildlife buffalo for the opening of David Mamet’s American Buffalo.

AT CURTAIN:

Present day. GEORGE in his jeans and T-shirt stands on stage at Belasco, with fellow crew members, as they run through set, lighting and sound cues during pre-show. House manager STEPHANIE WALLIS approaches the stage from the house. GEORGE sees where she’s heading and calls out to her.

GEORGE

Careful, Stephanie. The stairs will be moving on the next cue.

[STEPHANIE adjusts her positioning, just as a set of stairs slides out from beneath the stage into the house.]

TECHNICAL CREW MEMBER

[To GEORGE, lightly]

So, they’re going to put you on the cover of a magazine? Wow, it must be a slow news day.

[Other crew members join in the good-natured heckling. GEORGE shakes his head and smiles.]

GEORGE

Yeah, I know, I know.

[END OF SCENE]

Belasco Theatre

Within the Belasco Theatre, everyone knows Dummitt and Dummitt knows everyone. Within the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local One, the oldest and highly respected entertainment union in the country, Dummitt is also well-known.

“I represent 3,200 members, but I know George personally,” says James Claffey Jr., president of IATSE Local One. “He’s in the front row at every union meeting, and he mentors new members and gives them our history.”

Claffey recruited Dummitt to serve on the Broadway negotiating committee because he is “credible and well-respected with union employees as well as the employers on the other side of the table.”

In 2007, a Local One strike closed down Broadway for 19 days, and Dummitt came up with the “We are One” slogan and helped keep the members’ spirits up, Claffey says.

“He is a master carpenter, a great collaborator, and his work ethic is nothing short of excellent,” Claffey says. “We’re lucky to have him.”

Faculty and alumni of the Oswego theatre department share that sentiment as well.

“I consider George to be the most important theatre alumnus Oswego has graduated,” says John Mincher, a retired technical theatre professor who helped found the department in the 1960s. “He is an amazing carpenter and a very caring person. He single-handedly established an annual breakfast reunion for technical and design alumni in New York City that evolved into the annual theatre reunion that is still held today. He set up backstage tours of Broadway theatres for our students and faculty, and he helped open doors for Oswego alumni.”

Dummitt has also established two endowed funds at Oswego: George Dummitt ’69 Resident Assistant Fund to support resident assistants with financial need and the George Dummitt ’69 Technical Theatre Fund, which enables the department to bring to campus high-profile theatre professionals to speak in classes and to purchase materials and equipment beyond what the shrinking state budget allows.

In addition to the funding, Theatre Professor Kitty Macey says Dummitt has contributed to the department in ways that no amount of funding could. He uses his personal connections to share his peers’ professional work with students and to help Oswego alumni get their foot in the door, which is often the hardest part of making it in New York.

“He is just an amazing man,” Macey says. “He has been instrumental in helping so many people do so many things. He is a very generous person. He goes out of his way to support his alma mater.”

Through Dummitt’s efforts, the Oswego theatre department has copies of all the blueprints and plans for the Broadway production of Big River and the costume “bible” for Golden Boy, including 2014 Tony nominated designer Catherine Zuber’s sketches, fabric swatches, photos from the fittings of each character, charts for dressers, everything that costume professionals in New York City would need to costume a show.

True to his backstage style, Dummitt is quick to redirect the attention.

“Oswego led me to this very fulfilling life,” he says. “I feel that I owe Oswego. When I’m presented with the opportunity, it’s my responsibility to give back.”

AT CURTAIN:

GEORGE stands off stage as the cast takes their bows at curtain call. The lead characters turn toward the wings and beckon GEORGE onto the stage. The cast separates to clear out center stage for GEORGE. He looks out into the audience to see generations of SUNY Oswego faculty, students and alumni giving him a well-deserved standing ovation.

Bob Frame ’77 designed the lighting for Merry-Go-Round Playhouse’s production of Little Shop of Horrors.

While the audience perceives enchantment, Abby Rodd ’96, production manager since 2008 of Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., sees reality: 2,000 pounds of pig iron to counterbalance scenery; solidly constructed sets that won’t crash beneath the weight of actors or a goat added to props; complex electrical design to support sound and lighting, and much more.

Rodd’s schedule on a typical pre-season day includes two tech rehearsals; meetings with the artistic director, team leaders, directors and other key people; and lots of roaming. “Part of my job is to make sure all 120 people on the production team know what I know,” Rodd says. “With four shows in repertoire throughout the summer, a thousand decisions must be made to meet the challenges of logistics.”

Rodd often must speak as the voice of reason, something she learned from Jon Vermilye ’66, a great mentor and former technical coordinator and professor at Oswego, she says. “He would walk into the most chaotic situation on a set, and suddenly, there would be calm. I try to be that voice. I try hard not to say ‘no,’ and to offer solutions instead of additional problems.”

Offering solutions has also been the main goal of Bob Frame ’77 who, as immediate past president of the Theatre Association of New York State, has shared his Oswego education with more than 50 non-professional groups statewide; represented TANYS on regional and national boards and served as technical director of the national organization’s festival in 2011. His association with the group began in 1976, when he and other Oswego students performed at its annual festival competition. By the next year, he was stage manager for the festival and now serves as its technical director.

Bob Frame ’77

As a “department of one” at Cayuga Community College, where he is director of theatre operations and producer/director of the student drama club, Harlequin Productions, Frame encourages students to learn all aspects of theater. “Oswego allowed me the freedom to explore,” he says, noting that he was cast in a main stage show as a freshman even before he changed his major from computer science to theatre.

Later, when he couldn’t decide whether to accept a leading role or serve as props master, his Oswego mentor and former theatrical carpenter and professor at Oswego, Ken Stone ’68, asked him if he wanted to become an actor or a technician. “His question made me evaluate who I was and what career path I would follow. I chose the props master,” Frame says, noting that the decision set him on the path to his multi-faceted career.

—Linda Loomis ’90 M’97

]]>http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/08/stagecraft-behind-the-magic/feed/0Communicating through Lens, Language and Storieshttp://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/08/communicating-through-lens-language-and-stories/
http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/08/communicating-through-lens-language-and-stories/#commentsFri, 08 Aug 2014 19:49:15 +0000http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/?p=5949Never sure where life would take him, Frank Semmens ’64 M’68 found direction through travel and education. Now, he is celebrating 25 years of successful business with Translation Services International in Naples, Fla., which helps companies translate their documents into more than 30 languages.

An Oswego native, Semmens says his first immersion in another language was U.S. Navy service in Puerto Rico after high school. However, what “set the foundation” of his Spanish comprehension was a talented teacher during his undergraduate years at Oswego.

With a B.A. in psychology, Semmens spent two years in Bolivia with the Peace Corps, and briefly built rat mazes as a research assistant at the University of Toronto. Unfulfilled, he returned to Oswego for an M.A. in British and American Literature. This exposure to great fiction inspired Semmens to write creatively.

The degree landed him a job teaching English and Spanish at Mexico Academy and Central School in Mexico, N.Y., and then English composition at Genesee Community College in Batavia, N.Y. He got his students excited about composition with an assignment to write and film their own scripts. Semmens enjoyed this so much that he took a summer filmmaking course at Syracuse University. He pursued a Ph.D. in documentary filmmaking at Temple University, but dropped it in favor of making documentaries with PBS.

“It would have been nice to get a Ph.D. for my parents’ sake, but it wouldn’t have advanced my career at all,” he says.

From 1971-73, he made 30 documentaries, and in 1975, he formed his own film company, Image Productions.

In 1980, he made a film about Mohawk culture on the St. Regis Reservation. The documentary focused on Mary Adams, the last of the traditional basket makers. “Mohawk Basketmaking: A Social Profile” won a CINE “Golden Eagle” Award. With cuts to arts programs in the mid-1980s and the difficulty in securing grants for documentaries, Semmens went on to produce and direct industrial films.

His next career came by coincidence. While working as a freelance video editor and producer for Eastman Kodak, a manager overheard Semmens speaking Spanish with Venezuelan technicians, and asked him if he could translate. Although Semmens had never worked as a professional translator, he saw an opportunity before him.

“I immediately said yes,” he recalls.

That 1989 Kodak job was the beginning of Translation Services International LLC (www.translationservicesinternational.com). Semmens is still active in his business, and is planning a transition to writing full-time. He is working on finding the right voice for his stories; and he does have many stories to tell.

—Andrew Kowal ’15

]]>http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/08/communicating-through-lens-language-and-stories/feed/0Alumni Bookshelfhttp://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/08/alumni-bookshelf-12/
http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/08/alumni-bookshelf-12/#commentsFri, 08 Aug 2014 18:53:47 +0000http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/?p=5923We celebrate and share the success of Oswego alumni authors, illustrators and recording artists, who may ask their publisher/distributor to send a copy of the work to the Oswego alumni office to be considered for this column and our website, where cover photos of all works in this column will be displayed.

This autobiography describes the author’s beginnings as a humble farm boy who rises to national academic success through his faith in God’s intervention. Clendenning details how he earned a science degree from SUNY Oswego and went on to serve the fields of academics and ministry for more than 50 years.

Les Von Losberg ’69 M’70

The Box Boy Poems. Poets Union Press, 2013.

The most recent of six books and dozens of publications of poetry, this large-print collection is dedicated to a deceased friend of the author. Constructed on the conceit of a box, the 38 poems range in subject from toys to beer and in tone from humor to sorrow. The author’s introduction explains the impetus for the book.

Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D. ’73

Nice Girls Still Don’t Get the Corner Office: Unconscious Mistakes Women Make that Sabotage Their Careers. Business Plus, 2013.

An updated and revised edition of Frankel’s New York Times bestseller that has served for more than a decade as a guideline for professional women, this volume reveals behaviors women learn in girlhood that lead to actions that sabotage their careers. Frankel breaks down potential mistakes women make and offers concrete suggestions for addressing each issue. The book is interactive, with self evaluations and quizzes to help readers identify behaviors that can undermine their success in the professional environment. (See “The Last Word,”)

Robert C. Wigton ’77

The Parties in Court: American Political Parties under the Constitution. Lexington Books, 2014.

In this nonfiction depiction of past and current politics, Wigton explores the history and subsequent uncertain position of political parties in constitutional law. He highlights the ambiguity between private and public politics and proposes methods on how to maintain a “healthy party system” for a successful democracy.

Mark Allen Baker ’79

Spies of Revolutionary Connecticut, From Benedict Arnold to Nathan Hale. History Press, 2014.

Baker’s passion for history is contagious in this nonfiction exploration of the fascinating role that spies played behind the scenes during the Revolutionary War. Baker highlights the legacy left by infamous spies such as Benedict Arnold and Nathan Hale. The book is rich with illustrations and coded messages sent between spies in Connecticut that changed the tides of the Revolutionary War.

Jacquelyn D. Golden, Ph.D. ’90

Simple Truths. WestBow Press, 2011.

This guidebook to a fulfilling spiritual life chronicles the author’s own experience in seeking and finding knowledge, or basic information as she calls it, about the abundant life found in the practice of faith and praise.

Humorist Mollen’s collection of memories document his Catholic school boyhood and the fantastic family who supports his adventures, understands his aspirations and forgives his failures. The book is rife with icons of his era—tater tots at lunch, Orange Julius kiosks at the mall, The Muppet Movie and Apple computers. Learn more about this syndicated humor columnist at www.timmollen.com.

Jennifer Thompson Jackson ’94

The Punkydoos Take the Stage. Disney Publishing Worldwide, 2014.

Children will want to sing along to the original song on a CD that accompanies this story about young neighborhood musicians and the rock band they assemble as Lexi-Lou recruits them one by one to stage an outdoor concert.

]]>http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/07/wedding-album-10/feed/0Faculty Hall of Fame: Linda Syrell Tyrrellhttp://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/07/faculty-hall-of-fame-linda-syrell-tyrrell/
http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/2014/08/07/faculty-hall-of-fame-linda-syrell-tyrrell/#commentsThu, 07 Aug 2014 15:37:34 +0000http://www.oswego.edu/magazine/?p=5862In 25 years marked by “changes, challenges and celebrations,” Linda Syrell Tyrrell served three divisions at SUNY Oswego. Whether in Student Affairs, Academic Services or Administration, she was constant in her advocacy for students.

Arriving in 1969 to a burgeoning campus, Tyrrell spent one year as residence hall director of Lonis-Moreland-Mackin before moving to Seneca, Oswego’s first coed hall.

“Responding to students’ demands, we trained our first team of male and female resident assistants and prepared for selected students to live together,” Tyrrell says. “Despite the dire warnings from some community and faculty members, it turned out fine.” By 1976, two other halls welcomed men and women, and the practice was normalized.

After her appointment as assistant dean of student affairs, Tyrrell launched and directed the Oswego Student Advisement Center. A mid-1980’s appointment as assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences required Tyrrell’s mediation skills in matters of academic standards, including student hearings.

“When I was associate dean of Arts and Sciences, Linda and I collaborated on the development of academic advising services,” says Dr. David King, who later served as acting provost and dean of graduate studies. “We were charter members of the National Academic Advising Association. Linda is one of the exceptional people in higher education who was equally effective in student and academic affairs. She had an enormous positive impact on Oswego students.”

Tyrrell retired in 1994 as dean of continuing education, summer sessions and public service, where she helped establish the evening degree program.

“It seems like standard fare now,” Tyrrell says. “But it was unusual for faculty to teach undergraduates in the evening.” Tyrrell wanted to ensure that nontraditional students engaged in rigorous coursework. “I felt strongly that access to higher education for adults was necessary and that classes should be taught by a mix of full-time and adjunct faculty,” she says.

A non-traditional student herself, with the support of her late husband, Robert, and three children, Tyrrell earned an undergraduate degree at Rochester Institute of Technology and a master’s degree at University of Rochester, where she worked as a graduate assistant. “I was raised to be a problem solver, not to make excuses,” she says. “My choice, my challenge.”

Tyrrell, owner of Harbor Towne Gifts and Souvenirs in Oswego for 39 years, is past president of the Oswego Chamber of Commerce and sits on other not-for-profit boards, including Oswego Emeriti Association and Aurora, for which she and her husband, Frank, both volunteer. A loyal advocate of Oswego students, Tyrrell has ensured that her support will continue by establishing a scholarship through a legacy gift in her estate plan.

Reflecting upon her career, Tyrrell, who received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Professional Service, says, “Those were exciting times at Oswego. We all worked hard to understand students and provide appropriate services. I’ll always appreciate that I had great people to work with in every position.”

Tyrrell adds, “I hope I gave all those students something valuable for their journeys. I know I treasure the affirmation and wisdom I received from them.”

Joseph Miner ’09 and Heather Elizabeth Berkley of Watertown were married on Oct. 13 at the Watertown Elks Lodge. Joseph graduated from Oswego with a bachelor’s degree in childhood education. He is an applied behavior analyst therapist for Three Tier Consulting in Watertown.

Justine Vehrs ’07, M ’08 and Carl Nylen ’07, M ’11 were married July 15, 2011 at First United Methodist Church in Liverpool. A reception was held in the grand ballroom of the DoubleTree Hotel in Syracuse and the couple honeymooned on back-to-back cruises. Justine and Carl began dating in high school and both lived in Funnelle Hall throughout their undergraduate years. Justine is an English teacher at Fulton High School and Carl teaches Chemistry at Pulaski High School. They have both been teaching for five years. The couple makes their home in Fulton.